Bartlet4America News Archive

West Wing set collides with real thing

By JEANNIE WILLIAMS
USA Today

LOS ANGELES — Chelsea Clinton chatted with friends in the Oval Office. Betty Currie was at her desk nearby. But a pregnant Marlee Matlin was resting on the president's red-striped sofa, and Martin Sheen and Rob Lowe were showing visitors from Washington around.

This was not the actual White House, but the set of NBC's hit show, The West Wing, the scene Sunday of the first real-life party in the house where President Josiah Bartlett (Sheen) rules. Reality and TV fiction will collide again when, if all goes well, the show shoots at the Staples Center on Friday morning just before the Democrat National Convention platforms and podiums are torn down.

"It's taken about four months of deft maneuvering. We're very fortunate to have been given permission," producer Lew Wells said. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity." His brother, John, an executive producer, is superstitious even talking about it: "It may fall apart again. Logistically, it's extremely difficult to pull off. So many news organizations are using (the center), not just the Democrats."

Executive producer/writer Aaron Sorkin planned some time ago to use the convention to trigger the second season's first two episodes. This "prompts some introspection, takes us to some flashbacks, we see how our people got together on the campaign trail," says Lew Wells. "The culmination of that is the night before the acceptance speech. In the middle of the night, our group goes into the empty auditorium to contemplate what's in front of them. It's really wonderful."

Chelsea was the center of attention. She stayed for a couple of hours, clearly enjoying herself, talking to media guests and TV execs about her other party rounds, with John Wells at her side. She was pretty in a clingy, low-necked red blouse and black slacks; pale blue polish decorated her sandaled toes, and she gestured often with long fingers like her father's.

A red carpet on the Warner Bros. lot led to the West Wing entrance. It was so hot on the media-arrivals line that head writer Sorkin's wife, Julia, who is six months pregnant, became faint. Warner's own fire department medics arrived to check her vital signs right there on the carpet, as her husband hovered anxiously. But she recovered and both made the party.

Matlin's baby is due in three weeks. A neonatal unit will be at the Emmy Awards on Sept. 10 if she hasn't given birth (she's nominated for guesting on The Practice). "My doctor said, 'I just don't know what to tell you!" She's focused on the baby, "but I'm going to vote, as a good American citizen should do. I'm a Democrat and proud of that."

John Spencer, who plays Leo McGarry, Bartlett's chief of staff and best friend, admits he's a Democrat, and a Gore man. "But every once in a while I've crossed over in a congressional race." Whoever wins, "presidents seem to rise to the occasion, even the ones I didn't want to get in."

Spencer was looking kind of hunky in a black, open-neck shirt showing a little chest hair. He grabbed a smoke, and said he stopped smoking for 18 weeks last season and "I will stop again." He's been a smoker since he was 16.

Timothy Busfield, a journalist on the show, had a ball meeting real reporters. "I love being on that side. We can cause trouble, and that's neat." He's not too political and admits to being Sorkinized: "Whatever Aaron writes is becoming my interpretation of Washington in real life." Busfield attended East Tennessee State, but he hasn't yet "got a hit" on Gore. An "instinctual" voter, he says, "I like the way things are and the way we're headed."

Sen. Patrick Leahy and Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala gave Wing thumbs-up as their favorite show. "I tape it in Washington and take it to my farmhouse in Vermont over the weekend," said Leahy. "What's the most realistic is when they'll say 'on the one hand this, on the other hand that.' Most people don't realize in politics there isn't a 100% answer yes or no."

Shalala is enjoying Los Angeles, "where they have the best parties in the world." She told President Bartlett "he didn't have enough Cabinet officers on his show, and that I was out of a job on Jan. 20, and he said he'd find a spot for me."

Also prowling the other-dimension White House: Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart and chief of staff John Podesta, Sen. Chris Dodd, Philip Seymour Hoffman, who's here to make The Last Party 2000 documentary with Donovan Leitch directing. Meet the Press host Tim Russert said he'd like to go one-on-one with "President Sheen."